Why 'Free Will' is Logically Impossible

[Rational Atheist]

Here is a simple, yet powerful, argument against the idea that we 'freely' choose our actions.

1. Our thoughts determine our choices.

2. We do not freely choose our thoughts.

3. Therefore, our choices cannot be free.

I don't think anyone would object to premise 1, especially those who believe in free will, since by definition, a "free" choice, if it could exist, requires a person to consciously make it, which by definition involves thought. Premise 2 may be controversial to some, but with a simple thought experiment, it can be proven to be true. If a person could freely choose their thoughts, then they would have to be able to consciously choose what they were going to think before actually thinking it. In other words, there would have to be a time before a person thinks a thought that that thought was consciously chosen by a person, which literally entails the necessity of being able to think a thought before one thinks it. This, of course, is a logical contradiction. Ergo, free will does not exist.

[The Tanager]

Please pardon me for intruding into your discussion, but I would like to make an attempt at answering this question:

It’s not an intrusion.

As always, I'm open to the possibility of being mistaken and invite anyone to provide me with an example of a "freewill" choice which was neither determined by a compulsory reason nor randomly determined.

I’m not saying one can’t construct an explanation that runs along deterministic lines. That is all you (and Miles and others) have done here. You haven’t shown it runs along deterministic lines, but that you can frame it in such a way that fits the data. Determinists and Free will believers can equally do that. One frames it as a reason determines the will and the other frames it as the will decides what it wants to seek and then there are reasons why action X is that kind of good the will decides it wants to seek.

[mgb]

Just a note on the concepts being used. We don't have a rigorous definition of randomness. What is it? What is mathematical randomness? It is not easy to say.

If an event is physically determined - caused - then what caused the cause? The chain of causes goes back forever. But what if everything in the universe affects everything else? Like a galaxy of stars: each individual star, through gravity, determines the shape of the galaxy and the galaxy determines the position of each star. So what locates any star in any particular position? The galaxy does, but the shape of the galaxy is determined by the star. So the star partly determines its own position.

What if, on a deeper level, everything in space and time determines everything else? What could the word 'cause' mean it this sense? Does the entire universe cause everything and is the universe caused by everything in it? Is the universe a positive feedback loop?

[Miles]

This is something I wrote a few years ago-

Extreme determinsts maintain that the physical universe is just an outworking of the laws of nature and everything is predetermined by these laws. It is even argued that our brains are determined by neurological processes etc that are physically deterministic.

There seems to be a way around this determinism. It involves making a list of possible actions and making a choice from that list in such a way that the choice is not determined by either neurological states or any physical state in the world.

Here is how it works. Make a list of ordinary events and label them 0 to 9.

0. Read a book
.
.
.
6 = Listen to the radio

etc.

Now our choice is not determined by any physical or neurological state. It is determined by purely non physical mathematical entities. So we seem to have broken with any previous determinism by letting digits make our choice for us. If we are in the library, for example, we are engaged with a series of physical activities that, as a set, cannot be traced back to any previous physical state because the digit intervened and determined what set of physical events we would enter into.

Are you implying that making a list of possible actions; making a choice from that list, such as one the directs the decimal expansion of an irrational number such as the square root of 11or 1/23. etc, etc, etc, and letting such a mathematical operation work out the solution according to mathematical laws, are all uncaused events?

That your

making a list
making a choice
letting

just sort of popped into existence? This would be like claiming you didn't cause the automobile accident, but rather your front bumper did, which was directed by the angle of your front wheels, which was determined by the position of your steering wheels. Yah, sure.


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[bluegreenearth]

I’m not saying one can’t construct an explanation that runs along deterministic lines. That is all you (and Miles and others) have done here. You haven’t shown it runs along deterministic lines, but that you can frame it in such a way that fits the data. Determinists and Free will believers can equally do that. One frames it as a reason determines the will and the other frames it as the will decides what it wants to seek and then there are reasons why action X is that kind of good the will decides it wants to seek.

The portion of your post I've bolded above is incoherent.

[mgb]

Are you implying that making a list of possible actions; making a choice from that list, such as one the directs the decimal expansion of an irrational number such as the square root of 11or 1/23. etc, etc, etc, and letting such a mathematical operation work out the solution according to mathematical laws, are all uncaused events?

That your

making a list
making a choice
letting

just sort of popped into existence? This would be like claiming you didn't cause the automobile accident, but rather your front bumper did, which was directed by the angle of your front wheels, which was determined by the position of your steering wheels. Yah, sure.


.

No. There is physical causation but one event is not physically caused - the choice of items from the list. This is 'random' because it depends on the value of a digit, not on a physical event. This means that something happens that cannot be traced to physical determinism.

[The Tanager]

I’m not saying one can’t construct an explanation that runs along deterministic lines. That is all you (and Miles and others) have done here. You haven’t shown it runs along deterministic lines, but that you can frame it in such a way that fits the data. Determinists and Free will believers can equally do that. One frames it as a reason determines the will and the other frames it as the will decides what it wants to seek and then there are reasons why action X is that kind of good the will decides it wants to seek.

The portion of your post I've bolded above is incoherent.

The will determines what goal it wants to seek. It then chooses actions that it thinks will lead it to that goal. One can explain those choices by sharing the reasons action A will lead to goal X. The agent is siding with those reasons and rejecting other ones it could have followed. You can’t make a choice without being able to explain it with reasons, but that doesn’t mean the reasons, themselves, are determining the choice.

[bluegreenearth]

The will determines what goal it wants to seek. It then chooses actions that it thinks will lead it to that goal. One can explain those choices by sharing the reasons action A will lead to goal X. The agent is siding with those reasons and rejecting other ones it could have followed. You can’t make a choice without being able to explain it with reasons, but that doesn’t mean the reasons, themselves, are determining the choice.

Is there something that determines how the will determines what goal it wants to seek or is it randomly determined?

[Miles]

Are you implying that making a list of possible actions; making a choice from that list, such as one the directs the decimal expansion of an irrational number such as the square root of 11or 1/23. etc, etc, etc, and letting such a mathematical operation work out the solution according to mathematical laws, are all uncaused events?

That your

making a list
making a choice
letting

just sort of popped into existence? This would be like claiming you didn't cause the automobile accident, but rather your front bumper did, which was directed by the angle of your front wheels, which was determined by the position of your steering wheels. Yah, sure.


.

No. There is physical causation but one event is not physically caused - the choice of items from the list. This is 'random' because it depends on the value of a digit, not on a physical event. This means that something happens that cannot be traced to physical determinism.

So you believe that choice is random? Or that all choice is uncaused? If so, how does one arrive at a choice? Even the flip of a coin has determinant factors that affect its outcome.


.

[Purple Knight]

Are you implying that making a list of possible actions; making a choice from that list, such as one the directs the decimal expansion of an irrational number such as the square root of 11or 1/23. etc, etc, etc, and letting such a mathematical operation work out the solution according to mathematical laws, are all uncaused events?

If I use his list, and I roll a die (or, if you want to get down to the nitty-grityy, if I use a random number generator 1-6 hooked up to the decay of a radioactive isotope), then I've got round your objection. The choice is now random, as in, I could be doing something different in Universe A versus in Universe B, but I don't think randomness should be set opposite of free will in this way. If we come to a definition of free will that says Two-Face has free will and nobody else does, I think that's self-refuting. People don't want to let random chance dictate their actions. This can't be what people are talking about when they talk about free will.

Just a note on the concepts being used. We don't have a rigorous definition of randomness. What is it? What is mathematical randomness? It is not easy to say.

If an event is physically determined - caused - then what caused the cause? The chain of causes goes back forever. But what if everything in the universe affects everything else? Like a galaxy of stars: each individual star, through gravity, determines the shape of the galaxy and the galaxy determines the position of each star. So what locates any star in any particular position? The galaxy does, but the shape of the galaxy is determined by the star. So the star partly determines its own position.

What if, on a deeper level, everything in space and time determines everything else? What could the word 'cause' mean it this sense? Does the entire universe cause everything and is the universe caused by everything in it? Is the universe a positive feedback loop?

It might. I believe I read or watched something a while ago about the future causing the past just as much as the past causes the future. I've always had a kind of suspicion that it was true. Just because we perceive time going forward doesn't mean it does. We have a perception bias. We think that the ball lies on the ground because we dropped it, but the truth might be something closer to that we only had the ball in the first place because we dropped it later.

[Miles]

Are you implying that making a list of possible actions; making a choice from that list, such as one the directs the decimal expansion of an irrational number such as the square root of 11or 1/23. etc, etc, etc, and letting such a mathematical operation work out the solution according to mathematical laws, are all uncaused events?

If I use his list, and I roll a die (or, if you want to get down to the nitty-grityy, if I use a random number generator 1-6 hooked up to the decay of a radioactive isotope), then I've got round your objection.

Don't know how. As I understand the list, each item on it would produce a different outcome because each item was a specific and different operation or condition. So whatever his choice---the nature of the chosen item---it bore on the nature of the outcome. Now if it was a roll of a die, so be it, and if it was the decay of a radioactive isotope, so be it. However, this does not mean his choice, of item #6 say, was not a determining factor of the final outcome. All of which brings up the question of why he chose item #6 instead of one of the others.

Now if he relied on the roll of a die to choose the item, it was still a choice, athough one he simply let the causal effects of the roll determine. Same with letting the decay of a radioactive isotope determine an outcome. Although such decay is said to be random, it's not uncaused, just like the result of a thrown die is often said to be random when in actuality it isn't (unfortunately, we often use "random" to describe determinants we simply haven't or can't figure out). Considering the roll of a die; we're simply unaware of the all the factors that go into making the die land as it did. If such factors could be determined and how they played out, theoretically we could throw the die so as to come up with same number every time. Same with the decay of a radioactive isotope. With a supposed god like omniscience we could see all the determining factors of radioactive decay and use them to determine our choice of item. But our lack of understanding of the determining factors and how they work does not mean they don't exist, and unfortunately, like the roll of a die, a specific radioactive decay event is saddled with the misleadingly label of "random," typically implying "without cause."

"Describing the statistical nature of the decay process, which is correct theoretically, does not actually explain what goes on realistically on the level of a radioactive nuclei. When a nuclei becomes excited it can reach a more stable state by emitting particles. However, the nuclei is subject to the interplay of a number of forces - strong and weak nuclear force and electromagnetic. This interplay is not evenly distributed to all parts of a nuclei and cannot be calculated for individual nucleons, hence the statistical description which fits very nicely. This actually means not all probabilities are the same but we don't know which ones so we it is described by the statistical process of all the nuclei as a whole which equates to all nuclei having the same chance of decaying after one half life. Some theoreticians do, however, discard this physical interpretation as being of little practical use. It is worth noting that theoretical explanations can be very good at explaining a process and may give great predictions but what actually happens may be quite different. For example the wave equation is fantastic as a theoretical tool to describe the evolution of a particles at some time, t, but problems arise when one thinks the wave equation is actually real (refer to Baysian probability).
Source: Graeme Melville of the Australian Centre for Astobiology, astrophysics division of the School of Physics at UNSW, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics and an immediate Past-Chairman of the NSW branch.

All of which means that while we think we know all the factors that go into radioactive decay, we're ignorant as to their interplay that causes a specific decay event. Not that there is no cause.


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